Word: brewsters
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Some 8,500 men & women reported to work as usual at Brewster Aeronautical Corp.'s Long Island factories-and discovered that 4,500 had been fired that day. The sudden shock of this news stirred angry questions to which all U.S. labor wanted an answer: Was this to be the pattern of cutbacks and reconversion? Where were Washington's well-laid (or at least well-trumpeted) plans for painless transition to peacetime production...
...Brewster employes dramatically forced an answer. At the urging of their union (C.I.O. United Auto Workers), all but 200 of the day shift stayed at work, even after the night shift came on. Since there was too little work for two crews, some workers played ping-pong and shuffleboard, danced to the music of piano, brass and drum. The union sent in enough sandwiches, pies, doughnuts, coffee and soda pop for a five-day siege. Some of the stay-ins crowded out on the balconies, hanging signs: "We've Got the Tools. We've got the Ability...
...being thrown on the streets, without relief. Anna Rosenberg, the War Manpower Commission's slick, chic regional director, had 11,000 other jobs in the New York area awaiting the dismissed employes. But only about 725 workers signed up. Sometimes the new jobs offered less pay than Brewster's $1.14 an hour top for unskilled workers; sometimes the new jobs were inconvenient to get to. But mostly, workers hated to lose their seniority; some had worked for Brewster since...
...Navy made no attempt at a quick settlement of Brewster's tangled finances (the maze of conflicting claims between the Navy and Brewster total upwards of $20,000,000). Although he had left the company in the nick of time, ex-Boss Kaiser deplored the Navy's action of throwing 10,000 men out of work on three days' notice. With a look at Congress, which is making slow progress in passing a bill covering contract terminations, he warned: "This is a situation which many companies will face...
...Forrestal and Patterson appeared to plead for a work-or-fight law only three Senators showed up out of 18 on the Committee. And all three announced themselves as against the bill. Even the bill's two Senate sponsors, North Carolina's Bailey and Maine's Brewster, confessed they were about ready to give...